Identifier: tourthroughpyren00tain (find matches)
Title: A tour through the Pyrenees
Year: 1875 (1870s)
Authors: Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893 Fiske, John Safford, 1838-1907, (from old catalog) tr Dore, Gustave, 1832-1883, (from old catalog) illus
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Publisher: New York, H. Holt and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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triousartist, she shapes the delicate foliage of her plants.Here, in her primitive barbarism, she only knewhow to cleave the blocks and heap up the roughmasses of her Cyclopean constructions. But hermonument is sublime, worthy of the heaven it hasfor a vault and the sun which is its torch. 11. Geology is a noble science. Upon this summittheories grow lively; the arguments of the booksbreathe new life into the story of the mountains, andthe past appears grander than the present. Thiscountry was in the beginning a solitary and boilingsea, then slowly cooled, finally peopled by livingcreatures and built up by their debris. Thus wereformed the ancient limestones, the slates of transitionand several of the secondary rocks. What myriadsof ages are accumulated in a single phrase ! Timeis a solitude in which we set up here and there ourboundaries ; they reveal its immensity, but do notmeasure it. This crust cleaves, and a long wave of moltengranite heaves itself up, forming the lofty chain of
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Chap. VII. BERGONZ.—PIC DU MIDI. 361 the Gave, of the Nestes, the Garonne, the Mala-detta, Neouvielle. From here you see Neouviellein the north-east. How this wall of fire worked inlifting itself amidst this upturned sea, the imagina-tion of man will never conceive. The liquid massof granite formed a paste among the rocks ; thelower layers were changed into slate beneath thefiery blast; the level grounds rose up, and wereoverturned. The subterranean stream rose withan effort so abrupt, that they were stuck to itsflanks in layers almost perpendicular. It wascongealed in torment, and its agitation is stillpainted in its petrified waves. How much time rolled away between this revo-lution and the next ? Monuments are wanting;the centuries have left no traces. There is a pagetorn out in the history of the earth. Our igno-rance like our knowledge overwhelms us. We seeone infinity, and from it we divine another whichwe do not see. At last the ocean changed its bed, perhaps fromthe upliftin

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